Bullet in the Head (1990) on Netflix
In 1967 Hong Kong, childhood friends Ben, Paul and Frank run with a gang. When a fight over money turns deadly, the three flee the police and head for wartime Saigon.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.5/1013,623 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ben, Paul and Frank are childhood friends in 1967 Hong Kong who run with a gang and brawl with rivals. Ben becomes engaged to Jane, and Frank borrows money to pay for the wedding reception. Ringo, the leader of another gang, attacks Frank over the cash. After the wedding, Ben and Frank go after Ringo, and Frank loses control and kills him. The three friends meet and decide to leave Hong Kong ahead of the police. Hearing that the war has made smuggling profitable, they take contraband from a Hong Kong smuggler and sail to Saigon to hand it to a Vietnamese gangster named Leong.
Cast
- Chung Linas Mr. Y.S. Leong
- Kan-Wing Tsangas Jane's father
- Hang Shuen Soas Jane's mother
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bullet in the Head (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- After breaking with producer Tsui Hark, John Woo struggled to find backing for the film — stories circulated that Tsui called him hard to work with, leading to a virtual blacklisting — so Woo financed almost all of Bullet in the Head out of his own pocket.
- John Woo rewrote much of the script to incorporate his reaction to the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, and described the film as his equivalent of Apocalypse Now, saying it drained him the way that film drained Francis Ford Coppola.
- The riot scenes were so chaotic to film that John Woo panicked and ran into several shots, once running into an explosion that left large cuts on his head; Simon Yam burnt his face during the POW camp sequence.
- Bullet in the Head cost around US$3.5 million, the highest budget for a Hong Kong film at the time.
- Bullet in the Head was first planned as a prequel to A Better Tomorrow, but a falling out between John Woo and producer Tsui Hark stopped it; Woo reworked the script, and Tsui made his own prequel, A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon.
- John Woo's original cut ran over three hours, but Golden Princess demanded he shorten it to a commercially viable length, so the theatrical version was massively edited and the film now exists in many different cuts.
